Charlotte Swasey

I would love for this to be the prompt for people to crack down on mothership but I think we need to be super clear: people who work in this field, even in fundraising, have been talking about these tactics for years, and how awful they are. That clearly hasn't been enough!

'I don't care about Direct File': IRS chief says agency plans to end free filing program Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Bill Long said the agency will end its Direct File program.

"Nearly 300,000 filers used Direct File for the 2025 tax season, and 94% of users who completed an IRS survey rated their experience as 'excellent' or 'above average.'"

I don't have a great mental explanation for that! Maybe something about being less engaged and not caring about foreign policy?

Also found a question on partner earning preferences! Most people don't care if their partner earns more or less than them, but Dems are more likely to want a partner to earns the same amount, and women are slightly more likely to want a partner to earn more

What Do Republicans and Democrats Agree on? Not much, as it turns out, but sometimes basic life stuff

There's a partisan divide on most polling questions, but not all! For example, everyone seems to agree that new cars are worth it. Many many crosstabs links on the blog today.

cauldronllc.substack.com/p/what-do-re...

We asked a thousand people to tell us, in their own words, what is their biggest concern for the country. You can read their responses using this web tool. lubarcenter.shinyapps.io/trump-open-e... Here are some of my impressions from reading them all.

The shift to online surveys has made it so much easier to forget that surveys are an exchange between two people- if you listen in to a phone survey, it's extremely clear that this is happening

Oh cool! this paper is new to me but totally matches my anecdotal experience

Sometimes my blog gives you a view inside my head, but that view is of shit like "this is called teehee factor because I imagine people going teehee"

The Epstein Files and Expressive Responding people love to click a funny button

Respondents love to click buttons that are funny and the Epstein stuff is unfortunately very funny, today on the blog

open.substack.com/pub/cauldron...

The typing feature on the Remarkable is really bad - you can't move it around and it doesn't align to most of the page templates

And if you insist on going with the “haha checkmate, a poll said it was good” line, I am going to poll your local crows about their support for a new “earn peanuts by dive bombing this guy whenever he leaves his house” policy and be compelled by whatever result I find.

I'm so over arguing about if we should listen to "the data" as if "the data" is a cohesive entity that says only one thing, today on the blog

open.substack.com/pub/cauldron...

Today's post is about sci fi, specifically time travel stories, and why the idea of fixing the present by changing the past is compelling but also might rot your brain a little bit

open.substack.com/pub/cauldron...

Polling is really hard, NYC Mayoral Primary Edition with these sample sizes they should call it the medium apple

It's not that surprising that the NYC mayoral polls were off, and unfortunately there aren't any good solutions on offer

open.substack.com/pub/cauldron...

There were two major shifts Trump made that brought him more in line with the American public particularly in key swing states/Senate: anti-immigration stance and a much more pro social security/medicare stance. This was the famed @leedrutman.bsky.social chart.

Sure!

Democrats love to do politics, and this makes separating engagement from impact really hard. That and more on the blog
open.substack.com/pub/cauldron...

And, if you want to dig more into Dem tactics and evidence or lack of evidence, read my piece on organizing, field, and what "success" means
open.substack.com/pub/cauldron...

The Real Problem With the Democrats’ Ground Game Democratic organizers are hesitant to admit when get-out-the-vote efforts don’t work. One group is trying to change that.

Incredible piece from Vote Forward today discussing the (mixed, not very positive) evidence they found when studying their postcard program. This is so valuable, we need more negative results made public.
www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

This week, trying to be more specific about my doubts about organizing based tactics for Democratic electoral wins, because some very nice people had interesting thoughts I wanted to reply to

open.substack.com/pub/cauldron...

This is not much about politics, but it is slightly about raccoon rabies, which may be close enough

open.substack.com/pub/cauldron...

No One Knows How to Deal With 'Student-on-Student' AI CSAM A new report from Stanford finds that schools, parents, police, and our legal system are not prepared to deal with the growing problem of minors using AI to generate CSAM of other minors.

proliferation of nudify apps and the app store / social media complicity in promoting and platforming them is an absolute nightmare: www.404media.co/no-one-knows...

i think speed cameras are the politer, more car friendly approach to a problem that will otherwise eventually solve itself when pedestrians start wielding M-79 grenade launchers

It's not so much about voters (who aren't paying attention, yes) as it is about the slowness of getting the entire party on board. This doesn't apply for a candidate taking positions against the party, or one like Trump for whom the party falls in line

Already subbed! And the "last battle" point is fair, as is the uncertainty. I think my disagreement is that you do need to pick something quickly and hope for the best, and that with the slow turning of party positions, you don't have access to much flexibility

Plus, yes, public opinion is dynamic, but sometimes it is dynamic in a direction further away from your beliefs, and rapid shifts in party positions can come off as insincere

I am even more skeptical than this piece on how much politicians can lead public opinion (imo they can change salience but not direction).

I will take the argument that politicians should align with voters on salient issues close to elections, but I'd argue without *generally* aligning with voters, that pivot is nearly impossible to pull off. You'd be betting on voters coming around to your positions, as a long shot.

people get mad at me when I say this but it's a Serious Problem for bluesky's long-term viability that the userbase actively tries to bully people they don't like off here